A Little Reminder

I was kind of bummed when I arrived at a spot this morning and realized that the conditions were not what I was hoping for. I decided to stick around anyway, and I'm glad I did.

Even though I wasn't too stoked upon arrival, I later saw a bunch of groms that were. It reminded me of when I was a grom and how stoked my buddies and I were just to be out in the water - good waves were a bonus. It also reminded me of how fortunate we are to live so close to the ocean, and that in itself is stoke-inducing!

Flashback: One Million Dollars

Those of you who have seen the movie Austin Powers will undoubtedly remember the scene in which, after being cryogenically frozen and thus oblivious to the change of times, Dr. Evil brashly places his pinky finger next to his mouth and exclaims "one million dollars!" Unfortunately for Dr. Evil, one million dollars just isn't what it used to be, and, consequently, he becomes the laughingstock.

If you've read my profile, you'd know that I took more than a decade-long hiatus from bodyboarding. Not only did I stop bodyboarding, but I also stopped following bodyboarding in its entirety.

When I first started bodyboarding [in the '90s], being part of a team meant you were "doing it" aka you were the shiz. So when I started bodyboarding again a couple of years ago, and thought of a name for this blog, I thought to myself "hmm... how 'bout 'Team Stoked', cuz 'Team' is where it's at and well, I'm stoked to be back". Little did I know that "Team"-anything isn't as gnar as it used to be in the '90s, and it's probably now more of a joke than anything.

After realizing that the term "team" just doesn't carry the clout that it used to, I thought about changing my blog's name many a time. I never got around to it, though, and the name "Team Stoked" just kind of stuck.

So with all that said, I present to you my cryogencially-frozen-one-million-dollar-inspired blog, Team Stoked!

The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice...

But the later in the day, the better the waves? Not usually. It was this morning, though. Conditions cleaned up mid-morning, blackball went into effect, and if you were in a certain part of the line-up, you were most likely stoked.

This guy got a bunch of in-and-outs

Nick busting an air rollo

Curtain call

Here are some unedited clips. Since I didn't initially plan to video record, I didn't use a tripod - the videos are a little shaky. I'm not too stoked about the YouTube compression, as it degraded the quality pretty significantly.

Small Kine Hawaiianitis

The lack of waves combined with the uncharacteristic gloomy skies during the past month gave me a pretty good case of hawaiianitis (aka laziness), hence the lack of blog posts.

Fortunately, Mother Nature came through with a cure for my hawaiianitis today, which consisted of a little swell and clear skies.